166 VISITS TO MADAGASCAR. CHAP. VI. Two of them, viz. Andriampinery and Ramanandalana, were husband and wife, the latter expecting to become a mother. At the place of execution life was offered them if they would take the required idolatrous oath. Declining to do this, they were bound, and laid on the pile of wood or placed be tween split poles, more wood being heaped upon them, and the pile was then kindled. Amidst the smoke and blaze of the burning wood the pangs of maternity were added to those of an agonising death, and at this awful moment the martyr’s child was born. I asked my informants what the execu tioners or bystanders did with the babe: they answered, “ Thrust it into the flames, where its body was burned with its parents’, its spirit to ascend with theirs to Grod.” The remaining fourteen were taken to a place of common execution, whither a number of felons who had been sen tenced to death were also taken to be executed together with the Christians. The latter were put to death by being thrown over a steep precipice—the Tarpeian Rock of Antananarivo. Each one was suspended by a cord on or near the edge of the precipice, and there offered life on condition of renouncing Christ and taking the required oaths. Of these there was one who, though in the prospect of an ignominious, instant, and violent death, spoke with such calm self-possession and humble confidence and hope of the near prospect of glory and immortal blessedness, as very deeply to affect those around him. The young woman who had walked to the place of execution it was hoped would be induced to recant. With this view she was, according to orders, reserved until the last, and placed in such a position as to see all the others, one after another, hurled over the fatal rock. So far from being intimidated she requested to follow her friends, when the idol keeper present struck her on the face and urged her to take the oath and acknowledge the idols. She refused, and begged to share the fate of her friends. The executioner then said,